The Indie Sound of David

It’s no secret that Bejoy Nambiar is partial to Indian indie music, having used it to great effect in previous productions. His debut movie, Shaitan, used Bhayanak Maut‘s ‘Habemus Papam’ in the soundtrack, and also had Suman Sridhar (of Sridhar/Thayil) lend her voice to ‘Khoya Khoya Chand‘. MTV Rush, Nambiar’s 13-part fiction series which aired in 2012, featured bands including Shaa’ir + Func, Bhayanak Maut, Bombay Bassment and Demonic Resurrection as part of the shoot.

Nambiar’s second full-length feature film, David, is scheduled to release on February 1. The film’s music was launched recently at an event titled David Live, and includes tracks by Mumbai alt-rock group Modern Mafia, punk trio The Lightyears Explode, and singer-songwriter Siddharth Basrur. Nambiar told us, “The process of collecting music for the film was constant and we consciously tried to keep the music different from what you would normally find in films. It’s been something we had decided when we were making Shaitan and I really want to keep continuing to do it.”

Modern Mafia’s track ‘Arnie’ has been re-recorded in Hindi as ‘Bandhey’ for use in the film. A mutual friend connected the director to Mafia vocalist Varun Das. “One of my friends gave Bejoy Random Sheep when we released it,” he told us. “He called us the next day and asked if he could use ‘Arnie’. Redoing the track in Hindi was actually really interesting, we had to try several different versions until we found one that fit the situation of one of the Davids, that’s the one you’ll hear on the CD.”

‘Kunj Gutka’, off The Lightyears Explode’s upcoming album, has been renamed ’3 Kills’, because the song is used in a sequence where three people are killed in a grisly manner. “We played on the sets of MTV Rush. He (Nambiar) saw it there and just asked us if he could use it,” TLE vocalist Saurabh Roy told us. “We didn’t really find out it had been renamed until it had happened. Also, this <name of national daily tabloid omitted> journalist just called me and asked whether we’d ever lend our music to a Bollywood movie.”

‘Ghum Huye’, the title track of David, has been composed by Mumbai duo Bramfatura and features Goddess Gagged vocalist Siddharth Basrur on vocals. As Gaurav Godkhindi of Bramfatura told us, the song came about quite organically. “We met Bejoy while he was filming MTV Rush, and both Mark (Fulgado) and I put music from our first album into his laptop. Some of those tracks were featured in the show, and he also liked a track that wasn’t on the album. It was an interesting track but the lyrics were in English. So 80% of the production on that song was already done by Mark and me, we just had to rework it to fit the movie.”

David releases on February 1. Check out a trailer below, and stream the entirety of the soundtrack of the film here.